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Austin City Council cuts down fee waivers for Seton’s new hospital

Austin City Council cuts down fee waivers for Seton’s new hospital

The Austin City Council voted unanimously Thursday to grant about $900,000 in development-related fee waivers to the Seton Healthcare Family, only a portion of the $2.5 million in breaks the nonprofit requested for its new teaching hospital.

The $295 million teaching hospital is a companion to the new Dell medical school at the University of Texas.

The council most notably removed waiving $1.4 million in water and wastewater fees. Some civic activists had complained to the council that it made no sense to waive fees that would go toward the city’s water utility at a time when the city is struggling with water utility revenues amid a drought and will most likely have to increase rates.

Council Member Bill Spelman said he was previously in support of most of these waivers. But he changed his mind after learning that allowing Seton to not pay $1.4 million in water and wastewater fees would shift that cost on to ratepayers.

Seton had previously told the American-Statesman that these fee waivers would help offset other costs to construct the hospital.

Seton expects to break ground on the new hospital in August, which in 2017 will replace the aging University Medical Center Brackenridge and become the primary hospital for Austin’s poor and uninsured.